Red and Blue
by sleep-dealer
Summary: And the spaces in between. Murder prompt for thatdamnreno, hints of Reno/OC.


**AN:** This was a prompt for an RP partner. She wanted me to write a murder scene between our two characters, Reno and Mel. Just as some backstory, Mel is an OC with a history involving ShinRa, and Reno is tasked to deal with her, but until this point he's been hesitant to do so. They've developed an odd dynamic, somewhere between friendship and a mostly imagined, untouched romance. This rendition of Reno has some psychopathic tendencies, most of which revolve around the work he does as a Turk.

* * *

He'd never failed a mission before. Never, not once, not entirely. Even when things didn't turn out exactly as planned, he always came back with at least a small victory in his pocket. The car thief got away, but left us a trail to find the leader of the chain. The suspect didn't live through the interrogation, but his tongue loosened up nicely toward the end. Shinra corporation didn't exactly take the world by storm back when Rufus became president, but at least there was a little plot of land to lick with a drizzle. There was always something good to be had, a benefit in spite of the lackluster results, starlight through smog, a cup of coffee borne from the melted ice of a nuclear glacier, always something.

Not this mission. There was nothing good about it, no benefactor in failure, and the light was already fading from her eyes by the time he realized it.

_This is what happens,_ a part of him sang.

Her aquamarine optics were iced over, lids wide, brows turned up towards the ceiling, staring him down, looking him right in the face, her mouth open without shaping words, lungs still, face losing color, skin going cold. This was the guise of a victim. He'd played on her emotions to get her here, and like the impassioned girl he knew her to be, she fell for it. It only took three nonverbal words, in a text message no less: "I need you." Stupid, stupid kid.

_This is what happens._

The shock started to dissipate as her last seconds ticked away. Her head dropped forward, just missing his shoulder, and she let out a meek little whimper, palms shaking as they searched for the the knife. The handle was still welded to his fingers. She touched his hand, the gentlest touch, and he ripped it away, taking the knife and a scream with him, which wasn't surprising, given the way the ridges of the dull end struggled to charge through flesh and muscle. Must have hurt a bit.

Ha.

She must have dropped whatever she was doing as soon as she'd opened up her phone. It didn't take ten minutes before she was at the apartment door, knocking, calling out for him when there was no answer. The door was unlocked, an open invitation. She would make an awful Turk — first rule: never go through an unsecured door. Stupid shit. _This is what happens._

Panting with her voice, she eventually lost the battle she waged with her legs and collapsed, landing on her knees, still capable of sitting up, much to his surprise. It wasn't a small blade, and he'd caught her right under the rib cage. An ordinary person would be on their back by now. No, but that would just be too easy, wouldn't it? This was so her, just something she would do, prove her endurance to him in the worst possible way. That would have to stop.

She'd always made herself out to be this indestructible force, but the knife had gone in so easily, like her skin and clothes and reasons to suspect were all made of butter. He'd almost expected her to bleed blue hair dye, but she was just another human being, just some more red on his hands.

He was expecting her to fight back, so he responded fast when she went for her gun. He threw his weight at her, knocking down with tremendous force, crushing himself on the wound to make her wail again. He held her arm down with one hand and trapped her opposite wrist against the floor with his knee. The gun went flying and the wet warmth of her blood seeped into the fabric of his pants, and she smelled like work.

"What are you doing," she breathed, voice strangled with pain, "What the FUCK are you DOING RENO!"

"Cut it out." He clenched his teeth together and put the knife to her bottom lip. "Stop screaming."

This shut her up fast, but it didn't silence her, not by any means. Mel wasn't speaking, but there was a volume to her, broken down and trapped by someone she valued but still fighting for her next breath. Her eyes had been seized by a rabid survivalist frenzy. He looked down on her, robbed of her power, and felt something burble up from his stomach. It would be criminal to snuff out that fire; she was fresh and feeling and so full of unaltered, unadulterated** life**. He couldn't tell if he wanted her or if he wanted to be her.

But this wasn't about what he wanted. This was about what was best. This is what happens.

He knew it all. The secrets, the lies, the things she'd kept hidden under a thick skin for the past however long (perhaps even subconsciously to a degree), and he knew that this was the only answer. This was the safest path, the only way to secure their futures, independent of one another.

And he wanted her to die hating him. He wanted her last daydreams to be of his body outline in the street somewhere, of his pretty face she stared at so much smashed into a wall and barely recognizable, of baby maggots swinging on playground equipment made from the valves in his empty, black heart. Reno wanted Mel's dying wish to be of him dying, dying, dying, over and over again, a thousand unique deaths with no release and no promise of an after thought.

It was easier on him that way, because if Mel had died loving him the way she did in life, if he had even the slightest hint that she would die those thousand deaths in his place simply because it was as he wished, if she had so much as looked at him in such a way, with that unconditional admiration he'd seen her nurture in the privacy of her thoughts, if Mel** loved him**…

He needed her to want his suffering. Otherwise, what was the point?

And so he tossed the knife aside and slid his hand down to her hip, taking the second of the twin guns from its holster, never losing her frightened and alive eyes. She fought him more, but only until the angry slash in her gut constrained her back into submission. There was no getting out of this. This was the only option.

Reno hastened to set the barrel of her own gun to her pretty lips.

"Give us a kiss," he whispered, and pulled the trigger.

And she loved him. He knew it. She loved him. He heard it in the blast, and the silence that followed. She was dead.

This is what happens.

He got up and tossed the gun on the couch. Another man might have wept, turned into himself and let his body be racked with emotions because holy shit he'd just killed someone he once called a friend he killed her killed killed killed he really killed her taken the life right from her like it was nothing like she was just another day at work like she wasn't a functioning human being like she was just another name on a slip of paper killed her really **killed her**, but that just wasn't in the job description.

He turned his back to the scene and shut himself off, and decided it was best to just forget. Forget the sleep walker who liked ice cream soda and kept her headphones turned up way too high. Forget that she was dead, a hunk of meat, an object. Forget that anyone on the outside had ever shown him so much as a taste of their unrelenting pathos.

_Because let's face it—_

"Hey, yeah," he said into the cell phone receiver, "I need to report a critical mission failure." A pause. It was the first time he'd ever had to use that phrase. It felt weird in his mouth, unnatural, heavy. "Um, the Peterson case? Yeah. Yeah, can you send someone to pick up the body right away? It's bleeding out on my carpet. I know. Yeah. I know. I'll have the report on your desk tomorrow morning. Thanks."

_—this is what happens when you feel._


End file.
